


talk some sense to me

by featherx



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Ambiguous Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:41:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25261741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherx/pseuds/featherx
Summary: “You’re going to catch a cold like this.”Linhardt’s not sure if he had been awake or asleep, or perhaps somewhere in between, but he blinks once, twice, droplets of rain falling from his lashes. Thunder rumbles overhead, somewhere still far in the distance but closer than it had been when Linhardt had fallen half-asleep.Byleth stands beside him, an umbrella resting against his shoulder.
Relationships: Linhardt von Hevring/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 10
Kudos: 98





	talk some sense to me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aegisunmerge](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aegisunmerge/gifts).



> prompt: byhardt, war phase musings! thanks for commissioning, this aligns directly with a writing style i've been meaning to practice more of ❤  
> this sort of toes the line between T and M so i settled on the latter to be safe. there are a few mentions of canon-typical violence & vague sexual allusions, as the linhardt POV so demands
> 
> title from [i found by amber run](https://open.spotify.com/track/5zT5cMnMKoyruPj13TQXGx?si=4KrC6q4CQ-WDCyAM3o08vw)

“You’re going to catch a cold like this.”

Linhardt’s not sure if he had been awake or asleep, or perhaps somewhere in between, but he blinks once, twice, droplets of rain falling from his lashes. Thunder rumbles overhead, somewhere still far in the distance but closer than it had been when Linhardt had fallen half-asleep.

Byleth stands beside him, an umbrella resting against his shoulder.

With a sigh, Linhardt pushes himself to sit up; blades of grass stick against his drenched and muddied robes, and his hair is a complete mess plastered all over his face and neck, but he can’t bring himself to care. “Maybe I want to.”

Byleth says nothing for a while, and Linhardt listens to the rain pattering against the umbrella, watches the storm clouds light up with lightning for the briefest of moments before thunder crashes again. Briefly, he hopes Caspar is doing alright. Then, finally, Byleth speaks again: “It’s late. Let’s go back.”

Linhardt doesn’t argue when Byleth helps pull him up, but he doesn’t move to follow when Byleth starts walking. “Professor.”

“Yes?” Byleth responds, absently, only stopping and turning around with confusion clear on his face when he realizes Linhardt’s voice probably sounds further than it should. “Won’t you come with me?”

“Don’t you want to know why I went all the way out here?”

Byleth shrugs. “It’s not my business.” He returns to Linhardt’s side, holding the umbrella up a little higher. Normally Linhardt would make a teasing jab about their height difference, insignificant as it may be, but today he can’t quite muster the energy to. “I’d let you stay here,” he says, slowly, “but it’s raining. Heal spells can’t cure sickness.”

“Can’t they? I’d love to run an experiment on that,” Linhardt mumbles, but it’s more half-hearted than anything. Even the tickle of curiosity at the idea dies quickly in the next few seconds. “I went out _because_ it’s raining. I wanted to…”

He trails off. _I wanted to wash the blood off my hands. But it doesn’t matter because every time I close my eyes I still see it all over me, up to my elbows, splattered all over my face._

Byleth is silent for a moment, before reaching out and brushing his knuckles against Linhardt’s. “Come on,” he says, so soft Linhardt barely hears him.

This time, Linhardt follows.

Something about Byleth makes Linhardt want to stay with him.

Even during their academy days, Linhardt rarely considered Byleth much of a teacher—he only called him _Professor_ out of obligation, and now he uses the title as a fond nickname. Byleth made mistakes in lectures, left lengthy silences in between concepts, and frequently gave up on trying to speak by just assigning a whole hour of silent reading. Not that Linhardt minded, at all—it gave him a great excuse to do nothing but sleep.

Linhardt had trailed after Byleth at every opportunity, tugging on his coat (with sleeves strange enough to warrant their own research paper) and trying to wheedle for a chance to study him and his Crest and the Sword of the Creator. Byleth was not to be swayed, no matter how many sweet buns Linhardt tried to bribe him with—which was a very good bribe, if you asked him—but that was fine. Linhardt would get him someday. And besides, he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like spending time with Byleth, even if the variety of his facial expressions left much to be desired.

But then the war came, Byleth fell off a cliff, and there was no one around to keep Linhardt from the blood on his hands. His first kill was a lone bandit that thought him an easy target—Linhardt panicked, miscalculated, and the Cutting Gale spell swerved out of control. He had never quite realized how much a human person could bleed when sliced in half, until then.

“Linhardt.” Byleth cracks the door open, but doesn’t look inside. How disappointing. “Did you fall asleep? You’ve been in there a while.”

Linhardt considers not replying and pretending he really has fallen asleep in the bath, and then maybe Byleth will come in and… hm. The fantasy is already running wild in his head. “I’m awake,” he responds, drawing his knees up to his chest to rest his chin atop them. “Just thinking.”

“Oh. Oka—”

“Won’t you come in?”

A long pause. “Er. I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

“It is if I’m _inviting_ you, don’t you think?” Although the correct word might be _propositioning,_ Linhardt supposes.

Another, even longer pause, until Byleth finally pushes the door further open and steps inside. He keeps his gaze firmly fixed in front of him, and he immediately closes the door behind him, as if there’s anyone else in his dorm room. “Do you need anything?” he asks, leaning against the sink, staring at the ceiling.

Linhardt rolls his eyes. “What are you being so shy for?” Even if Byleth’s tall, all he’s really going to see from above his Linhardt’s head and shoulders, and maybe the vague outline of the rest of his body under the water. “And no. I just need…”

 _You,_ he decides against saying. It seems redundant.

“I… am not shy,” Byleth mutters, shyly. But he slides his gaze over to Linhardt anyway, and Linhardt doesn’t miss how his eyes linger a second longer than necessary on his shoulders.

Linhardt hums. They don’t speak for a while, and Linhardt stares down at the water rippling around his body, absently dipping a finger and watching it swirl around his wrist. Water magic, especially offensive, is essentially unheard of, the closest you can get being Fimbulvetr—it’s largely because water, as an element, was deemed too ‘unpredictable’ by so-called experts on magic, but Linhardt likes to think it’s because they were just too lazy to study further as soon as something went wrong.

He gathers enough water in his palm to form an orb, gently hovering above his hand. Byleth stares at it, then says exactly what Linhardt had just been thinking of: “With enough research, would you be able to use water in a spell?”

“With enough research, you can do anything.” Linhardt lets the water drop. Instead of flaring out like fire, crackling and sizzling like thunder, or blowing his hair away like wind, it simply drips down his hand and trickles down into the tub to join the rest of the water. “The real question is if I can live long enough to sit down and do all the research I want.”

He half-expects Byleth to spout some reassuring, but ultimately empty, words, but only silence comes. Linhardt’s not sure if he should be disappointed, relieved, offended, or all three.

When Byleth speaks, his voice is soft again, just audible over the beat of Linhardt’s heart. “Don’t you remember what I promised?”

“Hm?”

“As long as I’m here, I won’t let you die.”

The sentence is word-for-word from when he had first spoken it, and normally Linhardt would be a little alarmed by how good Byleth’s memory is—but then he remembers that for Byleth, he had only spoken those words some three or four months ago. For Linhardt, it’s been five years.

He sighs and turns away to face the wall beside the bathtub, away from Byleth. “I want to believe you. Truly.”

“Then believe me.” Byleth takes a step closer, and another, and another until he casts a shadow over Linhardt, standing right next to the tub now. Linhardt looks up, and immediately regrets it when he can’t look away from Byleth’s eyes—once dark, blue, and mysterious, now a bright spring-green that reminds Linhardt of sunshine through tree leaves.

 _Intoxicating,_ his mind supplies, and he furiously waves the thought away. “It’s not so simple as that.”

“It is.” Byleth’s voice is insistent, his brow furrowed, his grip on the edge of the tub hard. For a moment, Linhardt lets his mind wander again—if Byleth were holding onto his arm right now instead, hard enough to leave bruises, if Byleth were to lean down and just touch him, warm skin on skin—but Byleth speaks again, breaking him out of his thoughts. “Far too many people close to me have already died,” he murmurs. “I don’t want you to join them.”

Linhardt’s fingers twitch against his knees. Of course—Jeralt’s death, all those years ago, still fresh in Byleth’s memory. Not long afterwards, his hair and eyes had turned the color they are now, too. Had he lost someone else, too, for the power of the Creator Sword?

“Alright,” Linhardt says. “I believe you.”

Byleth gives him a long, unreadable look, then says a bland, “Okay,” and backs off. Then he mumbles something about work before leaving the bathroom, the door clicking shut behind him.

Linhardt rests his forehead against his knees and stays there until the water goes cold as blood.

When he leaves, only bothering to dress in his blouse and pants (his muddy, grassy, rainy robes can be Byleth’s problem), Byleth is curled up atop his bed, which makes his earlier excuse about ‘work’ a complete joke. By the mildly distressed look on Byleth’s face, though, Linhardt supposes he doesn’t need to point that out.

“Tired?” he asks instead. “Drawing that bath must have been hard work.”

“I usually take showers,” Byleth responds, which of course only sends Linhardt’s too-imaginative mind working overtime at the mental image. “Will you be leaving now?”

“No.” Linhardt sits himself on the bed next to Byleth, ignoring Byleth’s distinctly alarmed expression. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”

“O-Oh. Okay. Do you need anything?”

Linhardt leaves that question unanswered and responds with one of his own instead: “Why do you fight in this war, Professor?”

“That’s a sudden question.” Byleth mulls over it for a moment, and Linhardt makes himself comfortable on the bed, fluffing up Byleth’s pillow and lying down to rest his head on it. This leaves Byleth with hardly any space left to move around, but he doesn’t seem to mind—he inches away and rests his back against the wall instead, one hand absently playing with stray strands of Linhardt’s hair. “Because I have to… I suppose.”

“Not because you want to?”

“I find it hard to want much of anything.” Byleth stares down at his lap. “I want food and water and rest… but nothing more than that.” He casts a glance up at Linhardt’s face that Linhardt finds it hard to miss. “Although…”

Linhardt blinks, slowly, sleepily. He’s napped in Byleth’s room a few times, mostly out of convenience, and his pillow smells comfortingly like him. “Although?”

“I want you, too,” Byleth says, which has Linhardt’s heart feeling ready to shoot straight out of its rib cage and splat onto the wall until Byleth continues with, “to stay alive.”

“Ah…” Linhardt clears his throat. “I suppose I’m flattered.”

Byleth nods. “I think that’s it. I fight because I want to keep you alive.” A pause. “And everyone else, of course,” he adds, but it’s more an afterthought than anything, which Linhardt decides he might as well take as a compliment.

Linhardt hums, shifting closer to let Byleth card a hand through his hair. The action is soothing, and Linhardt thinks Byleth might have done this a few times before, but the memories are so hazy that they might as well have been dreams. With how often Linhardt sleeps, this is only all too likely—there are times he can hardly differentiate the waking world from the sleeping one.

“As for me,” Linhardt eventually mumbles, barely even awake anymore, “I fight for you, Byleth.”

It’s the first time Linhardt’s called him by name, at least to his face, and it’s obvious how much it takes Byleth by surprise considering his grip on Linhardt’s hair suddenly tightens painfully. Linhardt frowns, both from pain and confusion. “How is that at all surprising?”

“It—Of course it’s surprising,” Byleth stammers. “I assumed you were fighting for… for Fódlan, or something…”

“For _Fódlan?_ ”

“It never came up in conversation!”

Linhardt shakes his head. “Idiot,” he mumbles, but he doesn’t hide the fondness in his voice well enough, and Byleth must hear it because his harried expression shifts into something softer than his usual stern face. “I don’t fight for silly ideals like honor and glory. You must remember what I think of those. Of course I fight for you. For my friends, too, for the rest of this army… but you, most of all.”

 _Won’t you come with me?_ Byleth had asked, earlier. _Fool,_ Linhardt wanted to say. When Byleth first became their professor, he followed. When Byleth came back to life and led them to war, he followed. If he could, he would follow Byleth to the ends of this blasted continent and beyond.

 _Do you need anything?_ Byleth had asked, too. _You,_ Linhardt wanted to say, over and over, until it became a fact ingrained in both of their hearts. _I need you because then the war doesn’t weigh so heavy on my shoulders. I need you because you wash the blood off better than any cold river or heavy storm. What’s the point if you’re not around? I fight in this war for you, with you. I need you because I breathe easier around you. I need you because you make me want to stay alive. Don’t leave. Don’t let me leave._

“Lie down with me,” Linhardt mutters, when Byleth seems too flustered to speak.

“I—what?”

“Sleep.” Linhardt tugs on his wrist, and Byleth acquiesces endearingly quickly, letting himself be pulled down to rest his head on the other side of the pillow. There’s just barely enough space on the bed for them to lie down together, though this means Byleth is essentially also squashed against the wall and Linhardt is a few centimeters short of falling off. “You look tired,” Linhardt says, when Byleth still looks stunned. “So rest.”

Byleth opens his mouth, then seems to think better of it and simply nods. He sits up briefly to tug the blankets over them, and Linhardt can’t deny it feels nice to have Byleth tuck him in so tenderly like this—it makes him wish for something more, for them to do this everyday, for them to do this without a war hanging over their heads.

When Byleth lies back down, facing Linhardt with an adorable blush on his cheeks, Linhardt presses his thumb against Byleth’s collarbone. He wants this. He wants Byleth to hold an umbrella up for him, but he wants to kiss Byleth in the rain too. He wants Byleth to draw him a bath, but he wants to get in the shower with Byleth too. He wants to lie together with Byleth like this, but he wants to touch Byleth’s skin more, run his fingers down his sides and back, wants to have him shaking and trembling beneath him… or the other way around. Linhardt isn’t picky.

“Linhardt,” Byleth whispers. Linhardt has no idea why he’s whispering, but he certainly isn’t about to complain. “When the war is over… can we do this more often?”

Linhardt buries his face in the crook of Byleth’s neck, if only so Byleth can rest his chin on the crown of Linhardt’s head. “Must we wait for the end of this war? We can do this whenever you like.”

“Oh… you’re right.” Byleth’s arm drapes itself across Linhardt’s shoulders, and Linhardt sighs against Byleth’s neck when he feels fingers combing his hair once more. “It’s hard to sleep lately,” Byleth says, clearly suppressing a yawn. “But… when I’m with you, I…”

Linhardt waits for as long as his patience allows, but he’s not surprised when Byleth’s breathing evens out. He’s hardly disappointed—he thinks he knows what Byleth had been about to say, after all.

Outside, the storm rages on, apparently intent on wreaking havoc for as long as possible. Linhardt listens to the rainfall, but the freezing cold from earlier—out in the woods and then in the cooling bath water—is but another distant, dreamy memory. As he is now, he can’t focus on anything else but the warmth of Byleth around him. There is no heartbeat to listen to, so Linhardt lets his breathing sync in time with Byleth’s instead, idly rubbing circles on his back.

“When the war is over,” Linhardt murmurs, mirroring Byleth’s earlier words, and doesn’t continue for a moment. He had said _when_ so easily, so confidently, as if it were a given that they would make it out of this alive. How does Byleth stay so sure and certain? It can’t be as easy as simply believing it will happen, can it?

_As long as I’m here, I won’t let you die._

Linhardt presses closer to Byleth’s chest. “When the war is over,” he says, again, well aware Byleth cannot hear him, “everything—I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you then.”

**Author's Note:**

> the scenes hardly actually change much, but the scene breaks are there to deliver a more disjointed feeling (hopefully)
> 
> thank you for reading (❁´◡`❁) if you liked this, check out the pinned tweet on my [twitter](https://twitter.com/featherxs)!


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